With the advent of the computer age, computer and software users have grown accustomed to user-friendly software applications that help them write and prepare presentations with impressive graphic effects, such as raster-based effects. For example, modern electronic word processing and/or presentation applications allow users to prepare a variety of documents utilizing a raster-based shadow feature with the typed text, pictures, data or other useful objects. A raster-based effect is a graphic effect, which alters the pixels on screen to produce, for example, a blur or glow. When a user has applied some raster-based effects to their text and would like to edit or move the text around the screen, the applications re-render the text to show the user what is happening. However, rendering all of the graphic effects applied to the text can take a long time. The user will not see the text until the rendering has completely finished. The high latency between what a user types and what the user sees can be attributed to the display screen temporarily losing a portion of the text because the application did not finish rendering the text with raster-based effects while having to process more typing. This high latency can cause confusion and an enormously bad experience for the user.
Some conventional applications will either dial down or degrade graphic effects or partially or completely turn the graphic effects off while a user is editing and/or typing text. Then as soon as the user clicks out or performs some action, such as a right click or a “Render Completely” menu selection, the application will render the graphic effects completely with higher resolution. Other applications will key off of a machine setup at login and/or take a user out of the document to type into a separate text editing experience or text box when editing or typing. These conventional applications setup a static response based on user input and always dial down or turn off effects with changes or additions to the text. If the user feels like the application is too slow, he or she has to manually go in and lower the quality for a faster rendering of text with the graphic effects.